


honey in the rock

by klickitats



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Dragon Age Kink Meme, Gen, Getting to Know Each Other, No Romance, Red Lyrium, Smith Nerds, Unusual Friendships, and Dagna thinks so much of the world, everyone thinks the world of Dagna
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-27
Updated: 2015-04-27
Packaged: 2018-03-26 01:31:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3832129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/klickitats/pseuds/klickitats
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Inquisitor gives Samson to Dagna for study and research, thinking it worse than hopeless. But Dagna knows a little something about being a pariah, and a little something about <em>impossible</em>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	honey in the rock

**Author's Note:**

  * For [superdeath](https://archiveofourown.org/users/superdeath/gifts).



> TW: mention of abuse, red lyrium body horror.

_Have you tasted that the Lord is gracious?_

_Do you walk in the way that’s new?_

_Leave your sins for the blood to cover,_

_there’s honey in the rock for you._

 

Dagna runs her whetstone along knife blade once, twice, and then again—listening with her fingers, something like the way Maryden strums the lute, and not at all. Every tendon in her body vibrates in time, waiting for the hum to turn emerald, glinting and sweet.

 _The green note_ , Yvetta called it, that muggy-sweat night at the top of Kinloch Hold when Dagna’s hair stuck to her face, the air full of potential. _The second before the lightning strike, you feel it in your bones._ The jagged scent of lightning, echoing deep gray thunder. Yvetta raised a hand, twisted her fingers, called it down to the stone—the wind around them swelling and jolting and _singing_ as it filled with rainwater, so warm it felt like bellows under Orzammar, like the _sky was sweating_ and glorious, shining, teeming green. Called it down again and again till Dagna saw her life flash before her eyes when it struck the spot a foot away from her feet a dozen times, till the smell branded itself in her nose, till that green found a space in her bones to be tucked away, a smooth, wet home for a memory.

Dagna listens for the echo of it in the stormheart blade. As exacting as parting the hairs of a crow feather. Lightning strikes once, perfect in and of itself, and that’s how you sharpen stormheart. One chance.

She knows it will only be two or three more passes of the whetstone—she’s so close the crinkling, clear taste of old storms gathers in the hollow beneath her tongue. One slide, two slide—on the third slide, the whetstone clears the stone and the note reaches out across air and time to sing, tender on the blade’s edge. For a moment, it consumes the world.

Then Dagna blinks, grins, and sets the whetstone back on the workbench.

“That’s lovely,” says a low, deep, unmistakably _prim_ voice, and she tilts her head to see Adaar leaning against the wall, tall and slender and clad in his omnipresent beige. Dagna wishes he would let her add a rune or two, a little color along the edges.

“Thank you,” she says, pride and happiness making her voice swell. “Is it what you pictured?”

Adaar thumbs the base of one of his horns. “I mean,” he muses, “it’s hard for me to imagine how things work in your brain. I imagine it’s fairly wondrous.”

“You flatter me,” she responds, gently setting the blade down. “Done in a few days, maybe less. Definitely before you head to the Hissing Wastes again.”

He bows his head, silver caps catching the lamplight in the shadowy undercroft. “Dagna,” Adaar begins, and then trails off, face knitted up with anxiety.

“Inquisitor,” Dagna prods, “is there something I can do for you?

He nods, falters, then tries again. “You remember Samson,” he begins.

Of course Dagna remembers. She’d spent straight month devising a rune to cleave armor like his—armor with a heart of blood and stone, if only she could have gotten her hands on it to _study_ —and Adaar had proudly reported the whole of it had shattered like porcelain dropped from a rooftop.

(Not that he’d described it that way, of course—Dagna remembers dropping a pitcher off the roof of her father’s house, only wanting to see if cracking material that way yielded a sharper cut, a better-versed edge than honing it with the right fire and stone. The answer had been Dagna’s second favorite, which was _perhaps_.)

“I—well,” says Adaar, “I have a favor to ask.”

~~~

It’s not that Dagna hasn’t studied something living before. She spent a whole year at Kinloch just studying mage hands—peering as close as she could without getting ice on her face, but she still singed her nose twice. Hands were important—the mouth of the river, where the magic was made flesh and then became magic again in the air. Gregoir and Irving had denied her request for a month, but how was she supposed to make a knife or a rune do the same thing without learning how a body did it first?

(She’d offered to test it on the First Enchanter before anyone else, if he needed it as proof. She’d made him conjure fire once, twice, three times before she cocked her head and said, your hands burn the way coal does. Then she’d run her thumb against his palm and licked her finger, and said—confirmed. They let her do what she wanted after that.)

There are lots of guards in the dungeon, so she doesn’t feel afraid. She’s never been down here before. It’s cool, quiet but for the rushing of the waterfall in the distance. If it wasn’t a dungeon, she’d find it a good place to sneak away.

But it _is_ a dungeon, and that’s where she finds the prisoner. He sits in the corner of his cell—Dagna has excellent nightvision, so even in the dim light she can see his gaunt figure clearly. He is ghostly gray, his hair a limp and dry charcoal black, his eyes rimmed with the red of exhaustion. Some of his skin sags from his bones. What she can see is carved up like scars in a rowan tree, like a layer worn off of stone.

“Hello there,” she says. The only way she knows Samson heard her is because he blinks. “I’m Dagna.” Silence is the only response. Adaar had assured her that he knew she was coming. She waits, and when the stony silence continues, she says, “If it’s alright, I’d like some of your hair, please. That’s all.”

There’s another long silence, but just when Dagna thinks it’s time to go back upstairs, she sees him turn his head, hears the scratch of his feet on the stone. It takes him a bit to rise.

“Just run your hand through it,” she prompts. He does, movements awkward and brittle, like his bones are made of branches and cotton. He takes those heavy, shuffled steps towards the bars of his cell, and Dagna holds out her yellow gloved hand. She hears the guard behind her intake a sharp breath, but she can see no reason for her anxiety.

Thin and greying fingers poke through the bars and press black hairs into her hand. More than she expected—he must be losing it.

“Thank you,” she says, and leaves, going back up, and over, and then down again.  
  
~~~

Dagna puts on some goggles that Irving helped her make to see things extra-extra close, and she sees tiny cracks of red in the follicle, like the embroidery of ants. It could mean a lot of things—that his body is shedding red lyrium like sweat, that without his armor it’s beginning to grow inside him and peek out little tendrils of life, or that it lives on the surface, a parasite prince in a skin and hair kingdom.

She leaves the hair in a little dish and puts it on the _Harritt Don’t Touch This_ shelf. It’s across the room from the _DAGNA SHOVE OFF_ shelf. Balance is the key to sharing workspace.

She doesn’t know if it will continue to live and grow apart from his body, but that’s what she’s there for.

~~~

She goes back down again a week later. “Hello there,” she begins, close the bars. Maybe she waves. “How are you?”

She knows how it is, but she asks anyway. She would want someone to ask her.

A grunt this time, low and rusty and creaky from the back of the throat.

“May I,” asks Dagna, “have more hair?”

The trudging steps, the shuffling feet, the pale pallor hand that stretches out like a cave spider. She takes the hairs. “Thank you,” she responds, holding it with two hands.

It could be the echo of the waterfall, but she hears a sound like _eh_ from the form padding back to the corner.  
  
~~~

These hairs crack with tiny fractures of lyrium too. She adds them to her dish, walks over to where she can see the Frostbacks through the window (does one call it a window?) of the undercroft, and does some thinking.

Red lyrium lives, takes the energy of people and grows strong and hearty and hale. She thinks on Lyell, the old Kinloch mage who tended the herb garden and constantly fought with weeds.

She turns to Harritt, and when he pauses from his hammering to pump the bellows, she inquires for a favor.

~~~

Cullen comes to visit. “How goes your study of the prisoner?” Dagna notices how his mouth twists over the past two words, but not in the same anger as other mouths. When she set a book on fire, the wide open _o_ of an apprentice mage who then snapped, _what in the void are you doing_ , or the sharp _ah_ of stepping on someone’s foot, or the broken line of her father’s mouth, _you can’t come back._

“Quiet,” says Dagna.

Cullen raises an eyebrow. “That’s all?” he asks. Dagna shrugs. “A sourpuss,” she admits.

The commander’s eyebrows nearly graze his hairline. Dagna continues working on her project, unintimidated by quiet. He finally asks, “Does it bother you to work with him?”

She wondered when someone would ask her this. “Why?” she returns. He looks twice as surprised. “He is responsible for the deaths of thousands,” he says, as though she needs reminding. “You cannot account for the blood on his hands.”

“Now he is stuck in our dungeons forever,” Dagna says. “I don’t fear what’s in cages.” Dagna only fears cages—she imagines the commander can understand that, but it’s not the time and she has never been good at that kind of conversation. “And—my hands shake when I’m angry. Not good for the stones or my work.” She shrugs. “And I’d like to make nice runes for you and the Inquisitor. You pay me a lot for that. _A lot_ a lot. So—no.”

It’s not a great answer, but Dagna’s not bothered by it. The commander looks thoughtful, nods, takes his leave. Strange. She expected an argument.

~~~

“Samson?” Dagna is at the bars again. There’s a grunt of an answer. “Would you mind letting me look at your hands?”

It takes awhile, but he makes it over, shoves his hands through the bars. Little crystals of red lyrium peer through the lines in his hands, like a future coming true.

“Does this hurt?” she asks, looking closely.

“No,” says the face behind the bars, and Dagna almost jumps in surprise.

“Good,” she replies, perhaps a little too forcefully. “Nothing too…strange?”

An indifferent grunt. Dagna fingers her chin, removes a little tool, a small knife with a dull edge. “May I?” she asks, and is returned with yet another indifferent grunt for her collection. Her other hand retrieves a tiny dish from her pocket.

She taps the edge of a crystal, wondering if it will just chip a little like the tip of a stalagmite, when the whole thing pops off his skin and clatters like a tiny marble in her dish. And then there’s a dark pulse of blood that runs from the gap left in his skin, streams down his hand.

“Oh!” Dagna quickly sets her tool and dish on the ground, grabs a rag from her pocket. “Oh, oh, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you—” She presses the cloth to the wound in his hand, the pale fingers close around it and _yank_ , the side of his hand banging against the bars. He practically throws himself against the corner, holding his hand to his chest like he’s been burned with live iron.

“I’m sorry,” she says again, leans down and picks up her things, and retreats.  
  
~~~

Harritt makes her a little samovar out of iron—a place for a dish to sit, a place for hot coals to keep warm. And he paints it, to her delight, a tint of deep indigo.

“It’s beautiful!” Dagna is so, so impressed. A year ago, Harritt could not even be persuaded to keep tints in the undercroft. He would place them outside the door every morning, and Dagna would delicately pick them up and bring them back in. Color is important.

“Eh,” says Harritt, and turns back to the shield he’s hammering. Dagma hums all the way back to her shelf.

~~~

She only waits two days before going back down again. The guards don’t bat an eyelash when she’s there anymore, not even when she gets as close as she can to the bars.

“Samson,” she says, sees him hunched in the darkness. “I’m sorry.”

No answer. She goes back up.

~~~

“So,” says Adaar politely—that’s what she likes the most about the Inquisitor, he’s so _nice._ “What—what is this?”

“An experiment,” Dagna smiles. In a bronze dish, she’s collected Samson’s hairs, that little red lyrium chunk from his hand, blood from her own hand (cut carefully by Harritt, who had to be convinced for two hours before he would slice her finger), and after a little thought, a dollop of honey from the kitchen. The dish sits on the samovar, warmed constantly by nuggets of bloodstone beneath it. It is _firmly_ ensconced on her shelf, complete with a note that just says _danger._

“Is it…sprouting?” Adaar peers close.

“Like a snowflake,” she says. The red lyrium grows, thin, brittle strands intersecting like proud webbing, like blood glass woven by a spider.

It reminds her, blindingly, of when she took a sewing needle to the window glass of their house in Orzammar. She was nine and knew it was made from sand, from fire, from lightning, and snuck out of bed one night to light a candle. The needle would be fine enough to find where those blazing things live, to dig to the heart of the glass. She imagined slicing deep, and the windowpane catching fire.

The _scritch-scratch_ music of it all woke her mother. Dagna doesn’t like to talk about what happened next, but she still has the scar. Glass is expensive.  
  
~~~

She waits a week before descending again and resolves, this time, to make it the last. She will not carve out samples from the unwilling, even the criminal. That sounds too much like the mad mages Gregoir waxed on and on about. She knows how boring those lectures were to sit through—she would rather not have her name added to it. (Dagna prefers silliness to thinking of what she’s become if she’s just tearing gems out of men’s skin willy-nilly.)

This time, she deviates in her routine: she simply stands, quiet, hands behind her back. Long moments stretch on, and on, and on.

“What d’you want?” that heavy, low voice creaks from deep inside the cell.

“To see if you’re alright,” she answers honestly.

“The fuck do you care?” The edges of his voice were sharper once, Dagna hears, but time has made them ragged and sore. “More red lyrium to play with?”

“I’m making runes out of it for the Inquisition,” she says politely, as though he had said, _Dagna, what on earth does an Arcanist do?_ And, because it seems extra important to say it now, even though she hasn’t told anyone else yet—she wants a better idea, a result first—she adds, “And I’m figuring out how to kill it.”

“You can’t kill red lyrium,” Samson snorts. “You don’t think we tried it? I saw men rip it out of their skin, chop off _limbs_ without a second thought. It still riddled through them like a pox. It can’t be killed.”

“If it lives, it can die. No bones about it.” Dagna shrugs. “If you want to be part of that, you can. But if you don’t, I won’t force you.”

“Cullen will,” he snarls, “or the Inquisitor. You can’t wile your way around me with cheap words.”

“They can’t make me work,” responds Dagna patiently, as though it’s the most obvious thing in the world. She can see Samson stare at her through the bars.

“Think about it,” she says as goodbye.

~~~

The next day, she comes down again. Waits patiently at the bars. Hears the slow, heavy steps of him trudge over. He slides his hands through for her examination.

“You sure?” she asks. His sigh and the way he twiddles his wrists is a clear _get on with it._

~~~

Adaar twirls the rune in his hands. “How goes it?”

“I’m learning more than I ever thought I would,” Dagna says. They both look at the red lyrium _thing_ (Dagna calls it a tree), growing like woven fingers. What she trimmed from it, combined with more red lyrium from Samson’s hands, was enough to make a rune with punch.

“Cullen tries to speak to him,” Adaar muses aloud. “And I’ve tried more than once. He won’t say anything.”

“Oh,” says Dagna. “Really?'

Adaar nods. “He speaks to you.” And Dagna gives him a nod, for one good nod deserves another. The Qunari looks very thoughtful at this, examines Dagna’s little red lyrium tree. He doesn’t look scared by it at all—she’s trained him well.

“And you’re alright? Adaar cocks his head, the silver tips of his horns glinting a little in the light.

“Of course,” Dagna picks up her knife, goes back to work.

~~~

Blue vitriol is _boring._ Well—not boring, not in the way most people think about it, but compared with everything else, blue vitriol is like a walk on a cold beach in winter. The sea is cold, your toes are cold, the sky is cold, and the question looming over everything is _why bother._

Dagna has never been to the sea in winter, but Lake Calenhad must count for something.

It’s pretty, though, and good enough to be the core of Solas’ new staff, so she runs a chunk of ice over the cold cylinder, trying to coax out the magic. There’s so much _sound_ involved in magic and nobody seems to notice. The sound the lightning makes is so different from the sound ice makes, and the way you hear it is so different—lightning makes the core of you hum, trembles your inner ear, and you listen to ice with the tips of your fingers, the tips of your nose—the very edges of everything, that’s how you find where ice should be.

Ice is the only thing you can actually hold—although Dagna tried with hot coals and still has the scars in the meat of her palm, and taught her the most important thing: the right tool for the right job. Like how Harritt’s family hammer fits perfectly in his hand, but if Dagna were to pick it up she couldn’t make the same thing. The strike and the weight is suited for certain fingers. That’s its own magic.

She notices he left a tin plate with a roll, an apple, and cheese out of the corner of her eye. And a cup of ale—Dagna can smell it’s an Orzammar brand.

That Harritt. He reminds her of lemon curd.  
  
~~~

“If you talked to Cullen, things might get easier for you,” Dagna suggests, examining strands of lyrium winding around Samson’s wrist. His resistance to it is truly astonishing—having too many of the crystals surfacing makes him fatigued, foggy-headed, and they hurt (probably more than he says they do), but nothing like the monstrosities of his fellows. It will kill him, of course, one day, and it seems to be exacerbated now by his poor health. She uses tweezers to gently pull the strands away, thin and delicate as spider silk.

Samson snorts.

“I’m just saying,” she says.

“He left us,” is the reply through gritted teeth. “Left his brothers and sisters, and—fuck, what would he have done?”

“Died, probably,” Dagna is a dwarf, and thus rather matter-of-fact. “Rather than serve Corypheus.”

“He likes to think so,” Samson’s voice drops low, she sees his head bent in the darkness. “But would he watch his friends, his people, his _life_ put to claw and sword—or would he try to find a way out?”

“I don’t think that’s an excuse,” Dagna says mildly.

Samson’s hand clenches—she pauses, in case a quick move from him scrapes against one of her tools. “It’s not,” he breathes, “but it was just another yoke, another master, and—life.”

“For a while,” Dagna taps his hand with a gloved finger. He relaxes it, opens his hand. She goes back to work.

He leans his head against the bars. “A little while,” he almost whispers.

~~~

“You’re in pain,” Dagna notices the next week. Samson grunts.

“It’s fine,” he says. “Nothing I can’t bear.”

She looks at his arm today—it’s skinny enough he can wrap it around the bars so she can examine the way the lyrium sprouts from his elbow like a fine moss.

“Heard the Emprise is clear of templars.” It’s inspiring, Dagna thinks, that Samson is at a point where idle conversation is an option.

“Who told you that?” she asks. He makes a low noise in his throat.

“Ah,” she says, “Cullen. It’s been liberated for awhile, but I know the Inquisitor just took a force in for a final sweep. Cleared everything out.”

“Everyone,” says Samson, voice sharp, low. He clenches a hand around the bar, and mutters, “every _one._ ”

Oh. Of course. Dagna opens her mouth, then closes it. She’s not sure how to proceed. “It will be over soon,” she finally murmurs. “Their suffering. Their pain. I haven’t figured out what happens after death, but…” She shrugs. “Peace, maybe? I hope.”

Samson’s hands grip the bars so hard she wonders if his bony knuckles won’t just poke out of the skin. “There’s no peace for templars,” he snaps.

“There’s peace for everyone, somewhere,” Dagna retorts. “You don’t get to determine that.”

“And you do?” The whites of his eyes almost shine in the dark. He grits his teeth.

“Nope,” says Dagna.

She can see his jaw clench. “Don’t act,” he mutters, “like you understand this. _Any_ of it. Sitting here in your fortress, banging around with your tools. What the fuck does someone like you know about sacrifice?”

“Why can’t I?” Dagna starts putting her tools away. “When somebody understands something, you’ve got, I don’t know. Something.” Very articulate. Her hands are shaking a little. _Why?_ “I don’t have to have sold my whole, uh, _brotherhood_ to a demon to understand walking away from something _big._ Something hard.”

She shoves her tools into her pocket. “When someone gets it, you’re not alone anymore—but I guess if that happens, you can’t just sit here in this hole feeling bad, huh? You’d have to start thinking about how you’re going to make it better.”

Samson’s voice is colder than anything this deep in Skyhold. “Fucking _impossible,_ ” he snaps, and it’s like a metal sword running across stone.

She picks up her metal dish, her things. “And—maybe that’s too scary, too much for Corypheus’ old general. Well. Woe is you.”

When she turns, a glass tool falls out of her pocket, cracks in half on the ground. She swears under her breath and goes to her knees, carefully picking up the pieces. Harritt can help her mend it. “Why did you decide to talk to _me_ ,” she murmurs to herself, “instead of Cullen or the Inquisitor?”

And then she’s gone.

~~~

The thing about Paragon’s Luster is that while the outside is nice—a lovely white-blue, sweet and shiny, a cloudless worry-free kind of day—it’s the center you’ve got to get to if you want to make something worthwhile. Dagna used to think of it like being stuck under Lake Calenhad when it was frozen over—legs tangled in seagrass, fish with long teeth and shimmering gills, the light of the sun just a dim shadow. She thinks what it would be like to be a treasure chest at the bottom, the endless waiting, waiting for someone to find them. For someone to find the right tools, to have the fortitude, to even have the right _idea_. And then find it all worthwhile for what lies at the bottom of the lake.

This gives Dagna patience.

She spends the whole day showing Harritt how to do this—because it literally takes an entire day, dawn to dusk. Tiny taps, listening to the rock, where are the weaknesses, the breaches, the surfaces asking to be broken? Dagna uses a tiny hammer, a tiny chisel, and taps, taps, taps.

She gives Harritt the hammer and chisel awhile, but he admits after ten minutes he can’t hear worth shit, so Dagna gladly takes it back.

Right as dawn’s orange and red fingers begin sweeping across the open maw of the undercroft, there’s a soft _crack_ , and it splinters on an exhale, and Harritt reaches forward with careful fingers to pull away the shell, and inside is a dull lump of dusty gold, cold to the touch, strange and stranger.

“How’d you learn this?” Harritt strokes his mustache.

“My father showed me,” says Dagna, and she remembers it well—thirteen years old, the house had been just them for a whole year, and her father was up late next the fire, tapping with what looked like a doll’s hammer. He pulled her into his lap, had her hold the chunk of rock while he gently nudged and persuaded the surface, till it split in half like some kind of blessed egg.

He gave her the gold on the inside, kissed her temple, sent her to bed. She still has it. After all the years, it is the only thing she still has from Orzammar.

“Here.” She pulls out the lumpy gold center.

“I can’t take this,” he says. “It’s worth too much.”

“It’s meant for giving,” Dagna replies, presses it into his hand. Meant for friends.

~~~

She waits longer before she comes back. Has to have a long, hard think about it.

When she goes down, she stops just after the last step into the dungeon—Cullen is sitting on a stool in front of the bars. And, if she hears correctly—well. There’s an exchange happening.

Sort of. Cullen is turning red and his words snap and bite like frost, and she can hear the low grinding of Samson’s dull tones. Finally, the commander stands up so quickly that the stool falls over with the jarring crash on the stone, bids a tight _farewell_ and storms off, doesn’t notice Dagna as he sweeps past.

She approaches the bars with her hands behind her back, and as has become her custom, waits for Samson to speak.

“He wants to know about certain templars,” Samson finally gets out. His voice is rougher than she’s ever heard it. And that’s all he says. Dagna puts the pieces together. He stretches his arms through the bars, and Dagna spots a thin but angry line of red lyrium winding around his forearm. It makes masses on Samson, sometimes, but mostly it’s just like choking weed. She’s never seen anything like it before.

“You can tell him one day,” Dagna says, her voice quiet, “but maybe only after you can tell yourself.”

She watches him nod in the dark. The crown of his forehead is pressed to the bars. In her periphery, she sees something silver drop, and then another, and another.

A bead of water rolls down his forearm, then two. Dagna dabs them away with the thumb of her glove.

It takes a long time, today, but they sit in a silence that needs to be had. When Dagna is done, she unrolls her leather carrying case and begins sliding her tools back in place, the dish of red lyrium placed carefully on the ground.

Just as she’s rolling it up, a voice like raw ore says, “I can’t remember the last time anyone said _please_ to me. Or thank you.” He sounds ashamed of it. Dagna’s hands still—what is he talking about? And then she remembers the question she asked when she left the last time, scattered and angry.

“And I had a friend, once,” the voice is so quiet now she can barely hear it, “who made beautiful things."

~~~

The red lyrium tree grows strong and red. Dagna’s made a whole pile of runes now. This time both the Inquisitor _and_ the commander come and visit.

“We’re worried,” says Adaar with deep concern, his eyes wide.

“About this?” Dagna points to the tree. “It’s pretty contained. Nobody ever comes down here, and Harritt’s smart enough not to touch it. I think.”

There’s a snort from the other side of the undercroft.

“Uh, no, actually,” the commander replies, in a tone of voice that realizes maybe he should be more alarmed than he is, “it’s Samson.”

“Oh.” She goes back to tinkering.

“How is he?” Adaar tries.

“Sad,” Dagna finally decides that’s the right word. “He’s a little broken, I think.” More than a little. “It’s sad.”

“Has he—how does he treat you?” Adaar is so delicate with his words.

“He’s a man in a cage.” It is Dagna’s turn for the flat tone. “He can’t hurt me.”

~~~

Dagna is sitting, legs crossed, on the ground, working on shards of lyrium growing from the back of Samson’s knee, shards that make it hard to sit, or walk, or do anything.

It hurts, she realizes, because she can see his toes (foul toes on fouler feet), curl and clench with every move she makes.

Dagna doesn’t know a lot of stories—there’s not really room in her brain for them. And Dagna only knows one story really well. She doesn’t tell it, almost ever, because it’s a little sad. And people don’t understand it. They usually go, _how could you?_ Or they frown and say, _well, I couldn’t do that._   

“I met the Hero of Ferelden once,” she starts, tapping the tip of a shard into her dish.

~~~

“What’s gonna happen to him?” Harritt asks.

“I don’t know.” Dagna has been trying to find a solution to this problem for a few weeks. She can’t just pull lyrium off him forever. "It just doesn't seem right. And I don't know what to do." Ugh. 

“You think he could—I dunno.” Harritt makes a careless gesture with the hand not holding a hammer.

“Maybe,” Dagna replies. She looks thoughtful. Harritt gives her an extremely serious look, a look so serious it makes his bushy mustache seem insane, and that’s how Dagna knows that he has a perfect idea.

“And he doesn’t bother you?” he asks. Dagna shakes her head. “Try to hurt you? Grab at you? Yell at you?” Shakes her head three more times.

He doesn’t ask _are you sure_ because they don’t have to ask that question any longer. And then Harritt says something wonderful.  
  
~~~

The next time she goes down, Samson is waiting at the bars. He shifts his weight from foot to foot, the closest thing to anxiety Dagna has seem from him.

“Hello there,” she says, and he crosses his arms over his chest. “Heard the Inquisitor is bringing down Corypheus tomorrow.”

“That’s the plan.” Dagna hasn’t slept more than an hour a day for the past week, making sure his armor is perfect, that it wants to protect him, that it _sings._ She even offered to see what she could do to the silver points atop his head, but—he chuckled, said no. (“Till next time, Dagna,” he said. “I can’t wait,” she said, knowing he will come back.)

"It's over, then." It's a whisper. 

Dagna shrugs. "One way or the other," she agrees. 

And then Samson sags against the bars, knees giving out. His eyes are blood red, and she doesn’t need nightvision to see it. His long pale fingers try to grasp at the bar but they’re feeble and brittle as tree branches in winter.

When his head sags forward, Dagna sees something _red_ peeking out of the collar of his shirt.

~~~

The guard is kind enough to run and get the commander and Harritt, and to tell them they’ll need gloves. Cullen is the one who ends up carrying Samson up the stairs up, into the great hall, and down into the undercroft. They’re lucky it’s late and most of Skyhold’s residents sleep—Harritt says something about avoiding a riot, and she can only agree.

Harritt clears off a table, grabs an old leather glove and a bottle of brandy. Cullen sends a guard for healing potions, elfroot, bandages. When Dagna asks why not just get the surgeon, he shakes his head and says, “His brother was a templar. I do not think he’ll come.” Or perhaps Cullen just can’t bear to ask. She doesn’t know.

They give Samson some brandy, and then Harritt holds his ankles, and Cullen holds his arms. Dagna gives him the glove to bite down on. He’s barely awake.

She cuts away the rough linen of his shirt, and lyrium grows thick as prairie grass between his shoulder blades, winding up towards his neck. The strands gleam and pulse red. Work to be done.

~~~

The only thing Dagna can really say about it is she’s glad dwarves don’t dream. The sound as she pulls each strand out, or breaks the tip, or finds the root of the lyrium deep in his skin—well. Dagna’s not sure she’d ever sleep again.

Samson’s voice only grits out noises a few times—he grips the edge of the table and Cullen holds his arm steady as he can.

When it’s over, and they’ve managed to stop the bleeding, Dagna crushes elfroot and a few other herbs for a poultice. As she applies it to the wounds—the clean, green scent of it makes the room calmer than ever before—she hears the grit of Samson’s voice muttering something to the commander. Harritt lets go of Samson’s legs, helps clean up and then helps Dagna bandage scarred and broken skin.

She can’t hear what they’re saying, doesn’t really want to hear, but she’s certain Samson says a name.  
  
~~~

She keeps watch next to the bed—well, table—where Samson is half-curled under a blanket. She works on polishing a rune, quick work and simple.

“Shouldn’t have said that shit to you.” The voice is a wheeze, so low it barely exists.

Dagna shrugs. “You didn’t know,” she offers.

“You miss it?”

And that’s the hardest part. “No,” she admits. She misses her father, but for all the time she spends staring at things that grow, gloriously, out of the earth—she was never meant to live below it.

Samson’s head sags back down to the table, closes his eyes. He sleeps.

~~~

“Absolutely _not_ ,” the commander says, pacing back and forth behind his desk.

“Why?” She crosses her arms over her chest.

“He’s _dangerous_.” Cullen is literally gnashing his teeth, and that shouldn’t amuse Dagna as much as it does.

“You let him sleep on a table in the undercroft for three days,” she retorts. “Without manacles. With one guard.”

“He was wounded,” grits Cullen, “and you can—blow things up.”

Dagna smiles. “So we’ve established I can handle it,” she says nonchalantly, “plus, there’s Harritt. It was his idea, you know.”

Cullen’s eyes widen. “I thought—oh, Maker’s breath.” He sits heavily at his desk.

“Did that make it better or worse?” Dagna inquires.

“I don’t know,” he says. He rests his head in his hands.

“Let’s try it,” she invites. “What harm can it do?”

“No,” says the commander.

“Yes,” says Dagna.

“This is insane,” he mutters.

“Not entirely.” She smiles.  
  
~~~

 Dagna likes the ways people’s mouths work when they’re surprised—looping _oh_ s or stretched out _ah_ s. But Samson just blinks when they open the cell.

“There will always have to be a guard,” she explains as they walk up. “And we’ll have to take breaks some days.” The commander was mostly concerned about the fact that the greatest criminal Skyhold had ever held would walk in front of some foreign dignitary and completely destroy a peace accord with Nevarra, or something. Dagna doesn’t know much about it.

The undercroft is lit by the dim glow of dawn, and the guard stays posted at the door after it shuts. He stares at her, stares at the workshop like he’s never seen it before.

Harritt stands in the middle, arms crossed over his chest, completely unintimidated. “Are you gonna stand there with your tongue hanging out,” he says, gruffly, “or are you gonna make yourself useful?”

Samson moves slowly, unmanacled, unarmored, like he treads across a thin plane of ice. She follows him down the steps, watches Harritt as he places a hammer in his hand.

“We’re making nails,” he tells him.

Samson’s shoulders swing towards Dagna, too-white eyes furrowed into slits, mangy hair limp and dry. “Why?” he demands.

“You said it was impossible,” she answers with a little shrug of her shoulders. “Shoo.” She bats her hands, and Harritt nearly has to drag Samson over to the forge, gives him gloves and an apron, starts going on about tools and fire and the Stone-knows-what.

 _Impossible_ , she thinks. Almost snorts aloud. It’s her first favorite answer.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is dedicated to tumblr user not-a-templar, whose incredible art you should check out immediately.  
> Also, a fill for the kink meme.  
> tumblr: klickitats


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